Intel Corp is among the companies considering submitting bids for InterDigital Inc’s patent portfolio this month, while Google Inc is losing interest in the assets, people with knowledge of the matter said.
HTC Corp (宏達電), Intel, Samsung Electronics Co and Ericsson AB are reviewing confidential InterDigital data as they weigh offers for the company’s assets, the sources said, who declined to be identified because talks are private.
Microsoft Corp and Apple Inc have also looked, one person said.
First-round bids are due in two weeks, and bidders have been asked to indicate initial interest in the coming days, the person said.
Some buyers may team up on proposals, the person said.
Google is backing away from an offer after agreeing to buy Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc for US$12.5 billion last month to gain patents and a hardware business, the people said.
InterDigital, which had a market value of about US$3 billion as of last week might fetch more than US$5 billion, according to analysts at Algorithm Capital and Dougherty & Co.
InterDigital’s engineers invented some of the technology for high-speed mobile phone networks now used by the world’s biggest handset makers.
The Pennsylvania-based company has about 8,800 patents on inventions used in devices ranging from Apple’s iPhone to Google’s Android-based handsets and Research In Motion Ltd’s BlackBerry. Officials at HTC, InterDigital, Google, Intel, Samsung, Ericsson, Apple and Microsoft declined to comment.
Companies would not be required to submit detailed financing information with their indications of interest, one person said.
InterDigital’s shares have gained 55 percent since July 18, the last day of trading before the company said it hired Evercore Partners Inc and Barclays Capital to explore a sale or other transaction.
The stock dropped US$2.85, or 4.3 percent, to US$64.28 on the NASDAQ Stock Market on Friday.
The company has said its patents are deeper and stronger than those Nortel Networks Corp sold for US$4.5 billion in June to a consortium, including Apple and Microsoft. The companies are selling patent portfolios as smartphone sales are forecast to almost double to 1.1 billion in 2015, according to estimates from Gartner Inc.
During the second quarter, Apple and Samsung became the top two makers of smartphones after their shipments trumped those of Nokia Oyj for the first time, research firm Strategy Analytics said in July.
Apple’s iPhones accounted for 18.5 percent of global smartphone shipments, followed by Samsung’s 17.5 percent and Nokia’s 15.2 percent, according to the researcher.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day